Innovation Without Borders: Galileo’s Networked Approach to Better Higher Education System

Alex Usher: Hi everyone. I'm Alex Usher, and this is the World of Higher Education Podcast. One of the biggest, but least remarked upon trends in European higher education in recent years is the growth of private for-profit, higher education. Even in countries where tuition is free, there are hundreds of thousands students who now prefer to take courses at private for-profit institutions.
To me, the question is, why? What sort of institutions are these anyway? Interestingly, the answer to that second question is one which might confuse my mostly North American audience. Turns out a lot of these private institutions are relatively small, bespoke institutions with very narrow academic specializations. And yet they're owned by a few very large international conglomerate universities. That's very different from North America, where institutions tend to be either small and bespoke, or part of a large corporation, but not both.
Today my guest is Nicolas Badré. He's the Chief Operating Officer of the Galileo Group, which operates a number of universities across Europe. I met him a few months ago at an OECD event in Jakarta. When I heard about some of Galileo's initiatives, I knew I'd have to have him on the show.
There are three things which I think are most important about this interview. First is the discussion about Galileo's business model and how it achieves economies of scale across such different types of institutions. Second, there's how the network goes about collectively learning across all its various institutions. And third, specifically how it's choosing to experiment with AI across a number of institutions and apply the lessons more globally.
Overall, it's a fascinating chat. I hope you enjoy it too. But now let's turn things over to Nicolas.
Nicolas, Galileo Global Education has grown significantly over the years. I mean, I think the group if I'm not mistaken, it's 13, 14 years old now, but some of, the universities that it owns might be a little bit older, but can you walk us through the, origins of this group? How did you get to be you know, as big as you are? You're, I think, you've got dozens of institutions in dozens of countries. How did you get so big so fast?
Nicolas Badré: Okay, you're, well, thank, thank you, Alex, for the question. It's, It's an interesting story and to your point, yes, it was created 13 years ago, 13 years and a half. With investment of Providence Equity Partners into Institute of Marangoni, a fashion school in Italy, and it dates back now to 2011. Since then, there have been 30 acquisitions. It started primarily in Europe with France and Germany, or in the very first years, in 2014, the first steps outside of Europe materialized with the acquisition of IEU in Mexico. Then there were significant steps also in 2018 and 19, moving into the online learning space with Studi in France and AKAD in Germany. And actually there was really a, there's been a very fast acceleration over the past five years. For your information, I joined the group at the end of 2019. At that time, there were 67,000 students in Galileo, and uh, the group was present in nine countries. Currently we have 300,000 students in 20 countries. At that time, the group was very much focused on arts and creation schools as well, the business and management schools. Now we can decently say it has expanded into tech, into health, but also in some professional branches such as truck drivers, for instance.
So what does it reflect? It reflects two things. First of all, a very powerful organic growth of the existing schools and brands. Just take an example, ESG in France exists for 40 years now. It's uh, I would say a standard entry level kind of school for management. And it has diversified a lot over the past five years moving to ESG luxury, ESG tourism, ESG whatever, you name it. And it expanded from a couple of cities into 15 or 16 cities now in, in France. So it's been a continued articulation of both organic growth, very strong. And at the same time I would say selected type of acquisitions that has helped us while actually multiply the number of students by more than four in five years.
Alex Usher: So it's interesting, I mean, I think a lot of our listeners and viewers would be surprised to find that there would be such a strong for-profit institution coming out of France. Because when you think of French higher education, you think uh, gratuite, you think of, of free education. And why would people, why would so many people pay for education when they don't have to?
And it's a very strong trend in France. I think now more than 26% of all students in France are in some kind of private higher education. What do you have that makes people give up free?
Nicolas Badré: It's a good question, and it's not only for France, you're right to say that it depends in many places in Europe, including Germany, the Nordics and others. Having said that you're right also to point that in Europe and in France in particular, there is, there has been a growing share of private players into higher education over the past years, which probably reflects indeed a greater ability for the private sector to adapt to the new environment. And I would say, thinking of this probably I would focus on three dimensions that explain probably why we are successful in that space. First, we are obsessed with employability and skill education. And this is at all possible levels and background. Actually, our, we worked on our common vision statement or mission statement, and everybody agreed in the group that our mission is to unleash the potential of everyone for a better employability. And because of that, we are obsessed with that. We have very strong ties with the industry, or the industries at large. This translate into a capacity to adapt, create, renew, upgrades the program on a very fast pace to reflect emerging demands. And we know that competencies are becoming obsolete faster, so the key of success is to really get the traction on the job market and to say, okay, what can we do to improve our consistency with the market requirements. So that's probably a very strong driver that is common across all of Galileo. Beyond that, it's true that we have developed very unique offers. Tech Noroff, Noroff is a tech school in uh, in the Nordics in Norway, in a country that is even more for free than France. It's actually one of the very few paying schools, but the program is so good that actually people prefer to spend let's say 15 K for a year at Noroff because they know they will really have a super super experienced level rather than go to a public place where probably the competencies will be slower to adapt.
So that's the first one, employability and unique programs. Second point, I believe we focus a lot on student experience. How do we transform their educational experience? And probably that's an area where we invest and continue, we never invest enough for that, but it's definitely this driver that we have, to hybridize discipline, geographies, pedagogical approaches, and also because we have systematized student feedback. Not only asking students for their opinions, but trying to translate it in our daily experience. And last but not least, I believe there is also a dimension played by our core values, that we are very focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, high standards. So in a way that's a series of obsessions that we have that probably inspire some of our students. I think these are the three things I would think of.
Alex Usher: So a question I guess about how you make things work across such a diverse set of institutions. I mean, you've got design schools and drama schools and legal schools and medical schools. I mean, you've gotta you know, I think when people think about private education, there's a, there's an assumption that there's some continuity, or continuity is the wrong word, but some uh, economies of scale in terms of curricula, you know, that you can reuse curricula in different places, and I don't, my impression is, is that you can't do that very much. Is that actually you're managing all these different institutions you know, they're each their own boutique and they come with their own specific costs. How do you make it work across a a system as large as yours? What are the economies of scale?
Nicolas Badré: Well, I think it's also a very good point. And you're very right. We have a very diverse network of schools. We have culinary arts in France in Bordeaux with maybe 400 students, and we have universities with more than 10,000 students while in medical or business. So, you might question why we put these guys together. And the answer is probably something to have in mind is that we really built the development of the group on the entrepreneurship DNA of our school directors. They are in charge of their development. They're in charge of their growth, their diversification, their answers to the job markets. Now we are not obsessed by economies of scales, but we really value the, the network and what we focus on is first of all, shared methodology, in sales and marketing, in finance, in HR, in student experience. We also do have some opportunities to have synergies around systems in some cases. For instance, yes, we do use a similar CRM in many countries, for instance, but I think the real value of the network is the unique ability to leverage experiences and experiment innovation all around the network and then scale it up on an appropriate manner to the other schools. So I would say it's really this sort of shared things more than forcing. Economies of scales beyond borders because it does not necessarily make sense.
Alex Usher: And am I correct in thinking you don't necessarily present yourself as a you know, as a, chain of institutions to students, that each institution's actually got a pretty strong identity in and of itself. Is that correct? Like, is there a fair bit of, of autonomy and, and ability to adapt things locally?
Nicolas Badré: I, I think it's true that in terms of branding, we believe that each of our school has probably a stronger brand than Galileo. For most of our schools. And it's rightly so, because they do have their experience, their DNA, their drive, their development. So we rather consider ourselves to be a sort of platform supporting the development of all these schools rather than the sort of chain that would impose standards uh, practices all over the board. Again, we do have some methodologies. For instance, how do you run a commercial campaign? There are number of guidance that are issued, but then it's up to the school to, to manage that and to make the best of this methodology for its own development. This does not mean that down the road there is no value in having Galileo, per se. There is a value but in a way that's the value of a platform supporting its goals.
Alex Usher: We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back.
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Alex Usher: Okay, we're back. Nicolas, Galileo, I know is testing a lot of AI driven approaches across its various institutions. And what I thought was interesting in a discussion you and I had, offline a, a few weeks ago is that you're, you know, you're trying out AI in different parts of the institution. Some of it's around curriculum, some of it's around administration, some of it's around student services. Can you give us an overview exactly, what are you testing and what are the goals of the experiments?
Nicolas Badré: I think where we must first frame the usage, we have on AI, and I think it's important to to have a look at our strategy globally. What we are convinced of is that we face three mega trends in education in general, higher education in particular. First of all, student expectation evolve very fast and they demand more and more flexibility and personalization. Second, we strongly believe that there is an acceleration of new, the emergence of new competencies that actually question our ability to update, adapt our programs faster. And not, but not least the ability to go beyond boundaries and be very agile in the way we address topics, new competencies, et cetera.
So these are the three starting points that we really see as an opportunity for Galileo to differentiate. Once we said that, the idea is not to become an AI player of reference in the future, the idea remains to be a, I would say, recognized leader in education for a better employability, better lives, that's the standard. Once we've said that, we believe the vision we have is focused on four areas. How do we deliver a unique experience to our students? How do we connect globally educators that are AI trained and AI savvy? Third, how do we develop content that can be adapted, localized, translated personalized? And fourth, how do we increase or improve productivity in operation? And obviously when we talk about these four dimensions, you can see that AI can definitely be a super tool for that. So what did we do as a, a number of areas? The first one is what we call AI for content. AI for content, we go faster now in identifying the competencies required by the job markets. So we use tools to actually have a, more instantaneous connection to the job market to understand the competencies that are required and based on those, how do we design the programs that would best fit to these requirements. Then the second step, of course, is once we have designed the right competencies, how do we design the programs, the courses, the pedagogical materials? How do we uh, utilize that to actually facilitate the localization of contents? Just to give you an example, Studi is an online university in France, 67,000 students. It's a big one. They have 150 different programs. One year ago when they designed the program, like a bachelor or master year, they needed four months to make it or to design it. Now they need something like one month being one, two months depending on, on, on a number of specifics. The cut has, the cost has been divided by two. The speed has been increased two to three to four times. And of course, this offers lots of opportunities to have much more personalized experiences because you can update the programs much faster.
The second piece is actually on, I would say fundamentally the experience piece of it. How do we utilize AI for experience? Of course here we have lots of tools. The first one is we have embedded in our LMS lots of AI features to personalize questionnaires, mind maps, interactive sessions during the courses. But at the same time, we have also adapted assessments. Just to take an example in Germany for two years now with AKAD, which is one of our online universities, we let the choice for students to choose their dates of assessments. It's based on an AI approach where we actually redesign a specific personalized assessment for each student in line with the requirements of the accreditation bodies in Germany. This would not have been possible without AI, but it's something that obviously increases the engagement of students, personalize their experience, accelerates the feedback, which is of course very good in terms of engagement and pedagogical progress.
And last but not least, beyond content experience, we do have more and more initiatives in operations where we leverage AI to be more productive, more effective. Just to name a few in sales marketing we have now in certain countries such as Italy and Latin America, the usage of bots that help us activate dead leads and go back to them, ask them, redirect them to set up new meetings for admission. It's very interesting because it's pretty efficient and it's something that we will also push forward in other schools. We also have lots of progress in tutoring. For instance, Corndel, which is a big school in, in, in the UK for apprentices is using massively AI tools for a better follow up and tutoring and monitoring of the progress of the students on a weekly basis. So it's a lot of development in all these dimension, and what we see is that as it has really accelerated dramatically over the last, I would say 18 months.
Alex Usher: So you've, you've got a network of institutions, which gives you a lot of little laboratories to, to play with here, to try different things. How do you identify the best practices and then how do you scale them across your network?
Nicolas Badré: So, well, first of all, we have lots of different pilots and we try, we, as you understand, we are quite decentralized, so we do not have a sort of central innovation team of 50 people that impose an innovation on all the schools. So it's more a sort of scouting and sharing the experience than the one of the others. So it's more, more a sort, a combination of networks where we share experiences. Just to name a few, with a digital learning community, so all people that are really involved in the design of LMSs around the sys around our schools and the, of course exchange a lot of experiences. Now we have regular touch bases to present what happens in the AI for content, AI for experience, AI for operation spaces. We have designed some shared training paths for some schools. So it's a lot of initiatives uh, where we want to maximize the sharing rather than to, to impose anything. Because again, the context to your point, the schools are extremely diverse, regulatory wise, size wise, content, discipline wise. So I don't think there would be universal recipe. Having said that, in a number of cases, it's more a methodology, how to design and deploy a pedagogical chatbot. Of course, the experiences we are running now are very promising for a future scale up because we learn a lot from these developments.
Alex Usher: And I know that you, in a sense, you've, having institutionalized the notion of, of innovation within a system, I think you've recently opened a new master's program specifically on this question, right, on how to innovate in education systems. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Nicolas Badré: Yeah, I'm super excited to tell you more about this because that's what, where what I focus most of my energy these days. Actually with four institutions of Galileo, we worked on this project for one year called Copernia. Copernia is not a surprise, it's like Galileo. These guys have changed the perspective and the image is very straightforward. We want to change the perspective on education and put really the student at the center. And well actually, Copernia started that, Galileo confirmed it, and it's no mystery or no coincidence that we focus on that. The idea of Copernia is to create as a first program, a Master of Innovation and Technology for Education. And the idea here is really to cross and leverage various expertise in neurocognitive sciences, in tech, AI and data, educational sciences, innovation, design and management, to really deliver unique experience for students and learner to experience and develop innovation. And the good news and the asset we want to leverage is that they will be able to do that, primarily in the network of Galileo. So in lots of, we have more than 120 campuses, they have lots of areas for experimentation, for real. So that the unique value proposition is you want to experiment and design innovation, we will provide you with the tools, the fundamental knowledge, but with the capacity to innovate in practice, within the network, with our partners, with other institutions and really the idea is how can we make the whole ecosystem benefit more from the, I would say the environment of Galileo, from this expertise and the expertise that will be contributed by tech partners, academic partners, and business partners globally. And I'm convinced it's a major tool to really develop, share, expand, publicize, practical applied innovation. And of course, the idea is not to make it just an internal tool for Galileo, it's to be wide open. While we, we intend to train people that will be able to transform education not only in higher education, but also in K–12, in continuous learning, because we believe that this cross expertise, this ability to test and innovate, are probably worthwhile for all the sectors of education.
Alex Usher: So I'm really impressed with the scale and speed at which you guys can experiment. But it strikes me, you know, as I was thinking about this, why can't public higher education systems do the same? I mean, you know, if I think about French universities, there's 70, 80 of them in the public system, I think I, it's hard to keep track 'cause they keep merging. But you know, they, they could do this, couldn't they? I mean, you know, it's, it's a moderately centralized system and there's no reason that institutions couldn't collaborate in a way that would allow them to identify you know, new innovations that would be usefully spread, you know, as you say, at different speeds in different areas, depends on what works. Why can't the public sector innovate like that?
Nicolas Badré: First of all, I would not uh, have a global judgment on this. I think there are innovation all over the place including in public institutions. So, I, I would not be that sort of black and white. Having said that, it's true that first of all, we have while the pressure of being private and to demonstrate that we derive a sustainable model and this we need to demonstrate on the monthly basis in other words, we count on ourselves to develop, test and well, I would say optimize in a way the, the way we develop. So that's first the first comment.
The second I believe, is a, is an asset we have. We have the opportunity to test and learn in very different environments. Just to take an example, what I mentioned earlier regarding Germany, with the anytime online assessment, we could do it because it was German, because it was online. Now we have an asset. When we come and go to see the accreditation bodies in other countries, you can say, okay, look, it makes sense. It works. It is accepted somewhere else. Why don't you want to think of it? And it's indeed the values that we have. This ability to play between the academic versus professionalizing, vocational versus I don't know, executive. How do we benefit from this sort of diversity to promote solutions well beyond classical borders? And I believe indeed this is something that not all public universities can do, but in general that not all universities can do. Again, that's thanks to the assets we have been building over the past years that we have created this sort of huge experimentational field. Well, that, that provides us with this advantage.
Alex Usher: Nicolas Badre, thank you so much for being with us today.
Nicolas Badré: Alex, thank you very much to you. It's been a pleasure and happy to talk further, get in touch with your listeners, us, and well looking forward to other opportunities to, to touch base and and talking together.
Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek and you, our viewers, listeners, and readers for joining us. If you have any questions about today's podcast, please do not hesitate to get in touch at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Never miss an episode of the World of Higher Education podcast, go to YouTube, subscribe to our YouTube page. Join us next week when our guest will be Noel Baldwin. He's the Chief Executive Officer of the Future Skills Centre here in Canada, and he'll be joining us to talk about the program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies. See you then.